THE POISON BELT . 
7i 
London Times is a daily paper.” He drew 
out a copy from his inside pocket. “ Here is 
the letter to which I refer.” 
Challenger chuckled and rubbed his hands. 
“ I begin to understand/’ said he. “ So 
you read this letter this morning ? ” 
“ Yes, sir.” 
“ And came at once to interview me?” 
“ Yes, sir.” 
“ Did you observe anything unusual upon 
the journey down ? ” 
“ Well, to tell the truth, your people seemed 
more lively and generally human than I have 
ever seen them. The baggage-man set out 
to tell me a funny story, and that’s a new 
experience for me in this country.” 
“ Nothing else ? ” 
“ Why, no, sir, not that I can recall.” 
“ Well, now, what hour did you leave 
Victoria ? ” 
The American smiled. 
“ I came here to interview you, Professor, 
but it seems to be a case of : Is this nigger 
fishing, or is this fish niggering ? You’re doing 
most of the work.” 
“ It happens to interest me. Do you recall 
the hour ? ” 
“ Sure. It was half-past twelve.” 
“ And you arrived ? ” 
“ At a quarter-past two.” 
“ And you hired a cab ? ” 
“ That was so.” 
“ How far do you suppose it is to the 
station ? ” 
“ Well, I should reckon the best part of 
two miles.” 
t( So how long do you think it took you ? ” 
“ Well, half an hour, maybe, with that 
asthmatic in front.” 
“ So it should be three o’clock ? ” 
“ Yes, or a trifle after it.” 
“ Look at your watch.” 
The American did so, and then stared at us 
in astonishment. 
“Say!” he cried. “It’s twenty past six. 
That horse has broken every record, sure. 
Four hours from the station ! But it’s 
not possible. The sun is pretty low, now 
that I come to look at it. Well, there’s some- 
thing here I don’t understand.” 
“ Have you no remembrance of anything 
remarkable as you came up the hill ? ” 
“Well, I seem to recollect that I was 
mighty sleepy once. Jt comes back to me 
that I wanted to say something to the driver, 
and that I couldn’t make him heed me. I 
guess it was the heat, but I felt swimmy for 
a moment. That’s all.” 
“ So it is with the whole human race,” said 
Challenger to me. “ They have all felt 
swimmy for a moment. None of them 
have as yet any comprehension of what has 
occurred. Each will go on with his inter- 
rupted job as Austin has snatched up his 
hose-pipe or the golfer continued his game. 
Your editor, Malone, will continue the issue 
of his papers, and very much amazed he will 
be at finding that an issue is missing. Yes, 
my young friend,” he added, to the American 
reporter, with a sudden mood of amused 
geniality, “ it may interest you to know that 
the world has swum safely through the 
poisonous current which swirls like the Gulf 
Stream through the ocean of ether. You 
will also kindly note for your own future con- 
venience that to-day is not Friday, August the 
twenty-seventh, but Saturday, August the 
twenty-eighth, and that you sat senseless in 
your cab for twenty-eight hours upon the 
Rotherfield Hill.” 
And “ right here,” as my American col- 
league would say, I may bring this narrative 
to an end. It is, as you are probably aware, 
only a fuller and more detailed version of 
the account which appeared in the Monday 
edition of the Daily Gazette — an account 
which has been universally admitted to be 
the greatest journalistic scoop of all time, 
which sold no fewer than three-and-a-half 
million copies of the paper. Framed upon 
the wall of my sanctum I retain those mag- 
nificent headlines : — 
TWENTY-EIGHT HOURS’ WORLD COMA. 
UNPRECEDENTED EXPERIENCE. 
CHALLENGER JUSTIFIED. 
Our Correspondent Escapes. 
ENTHRA LLING NARRATIVE. 
THE OXYGEN ROOM. WEIRD MOTOR DRIVE. 
DEAD LONDON. 
REPLACING THE MISSING PAGE. 
GREAT FIRES AND LOSS OF LIFE. 
WILL IT RECUR ? 
Underneath this glorious scroll came nine- 
und-a-half columns of narrative, in which 
appeared the first, last, and only account of 
the history of the planet, so far as one ob- 
server could draw it, during one long day of 
its existence. Challenger and Summerlee 
have treated the matter in a joint scientific 
paper, but to me alone was left, the popular 
account. Surely I can sing “ Nunc Dimittis.” 
What is left but anti-climax in the life of a 
journalist after that ! 
But let me not end on sensational head- 
lines and a merely personal triumph. Rather 
